In this video, I'm going to share
with you the top 9 things I wish I'd known when I started with 3D printing. From the basics, to more advanced
things I've only recently learned after years in the hobby. So whether you're just getting started,
or you've been in the hobby for a while now, stay tuned, because I have
some valuable tips for everybody. Let's get after it. As I write this, it's just after the
holiday season, which means that a lot of new people are joining in on the
hobby, and as 3D printers continue to get more and more consumer -riendly, our
geeky little hobby is moving out of the basement and into the hands of a younger,
less technical, and wider audience -
which is great. Let me be the first to welcome you to
an incredible hobby, and one that will give you so many opportunities for
learning, creativity, self expression, problem solving, and friendships. By the way, if you're new here, this
channel is all about helping you make the most of your 3D printer and other
maker tools to create awesome stuff. So consider hitting that subscribe
button if that sounds like something that you'd be interested in. Anyways, with so many new people
joining the hobby every single day, I got a bit nostalgic recently thinking
back on my own journey from beginner to still learning every single day
but definitely very proficient. And, I decided to share some of
the things that I wish I'd known when I was just starting out. So, without any further
ado, let's dive in with You may not know this, but in my
previous life, I taught accelerated learning and memory techniques to
over 300, 000 people worldwide. Basically, I was a professional learner. So when I first became interested in 3D
printing as a hobby, as with every hobby, I took the learning part very seriously. In fact, I actually took a great
online course on Udemy for like 15 bucks, which introduced me to all the
terminology, how everything worked, and so on, before my printer even arrived. Now, I know that you can learn everything
online on YouTube or on forums for free, and that's totally fine, but
as I always said when I spoke to audiences about online courses, people
don't pay for the information, because all of that is out there for free. People pay for the curation
of that information. They pay because someone has taken the
time to curate factual information in the best possible order to learn it, in
order to achieve the optimal learning outcome in the minimum amount of time. Look, I know that 3D printers and
their accompanying software are becoming more and more user-friendly
every single day, with fast swap hot-ends and mobile apps that take
out all the guesswork, and so on. And if you really only want to have
the bare minimum understanding in order to print the things that you
want, say because 3D printing is really only a means to your real hobby like
tabletop gaming or building drones, then by all means, don't get bogged
down in learning the ins and outs and skip past this chapter in the video. But if you do think that this is a
hobby that you'll want to dive deep in, then half the fun is learning
and improving your skillset. And while myself and so many other
fantastic content creators put out tons of freely available content here on
YouTube and elsewhere, the algorithm here doesn't reward us for going into
very basic or very specific topics. And while you can learn these things
by piecing them together yourself, personally, I feel like I get a real
jumpstart on the hobby just by taking a course that put it all together. Now, there are a plethora of great
resources out there, both free and paid, ranging from books from my
fellow creators Angus at Maker's Muse, or Sean, the 3D Print General, but
there are also online courses like the one I took on Udemy, or the super
affordable ones from Josef Prusa himself. And there are even fantastic free
guides out there, like the comprehensive Ellis 3D Printer Tuning Guide. I'm definitely not trying to push
you towards spending money if you have the time and the patience to
actually piece things together and learn on your own using free videos. I love autodidacts. I guess what I'm saying though is that
you wouldn't buy a piano and then just try to figure it out on your own, would you? You would treat learning about this
new instrument as a part of a bigger hobby, whether that meant books or
lessons or just taking the time to find lots of great free YouTube tutorials. 3D printing is no different, so if you
want to gain the skills, rather than just getting frustrated and giving
up like so many people do, then make sure you invest in your learning. Which leads me to One of the best things about
3D printing as a hobby is that it's a very deep rabbit hole. The minute you learn about one technique
or trick or material, you're presented with new challenges, new possibilities,
and new frontiers to conquer. This is great because it means
you're probably never going to get bored with this hobby. But one thing I wish, wish that I'd
known sooner is that the endless rabbit hole doesn't only extend to
the learning aspect of 3D printing. It also extends to 3D printers, 3D printer
accessories, and 3D printer filament. When I first started out, I bought
a pretty crappy printer just to dip my toes into the water. When I realized how much I loved
this hobby, I figured I'd invest in one very good 3d printer,
and that would be it, right? Pretty soon, I needed a bigger printer
for another project, then I needed an enclosed printer for printing more
durable materials, then I needed a faster printer for, you get the idea. The point is, I've had literally
dozens of printers at this point, and I'm still excited about the next
big thing, or the next hot upgrade to my existing printers, or, or, or. And then there's the filament. There are literally endless colors,
dozens of different polymers, and new combinations, formulations, and
variations coming out every single day. I've heard psychologists say before
that what makes money unique and unnatural is the fact that unlike
every other substance in the known universe, there is no level of satiety. No matter how much money you have, you
would never mind having a little bit more. That's why it causes so many
problems for so many people. Well, I'm here to tell you, friends,
that filament is the same way. Even when I have over 130 rolls
lining my home office, recording set, and print farm, I'm always
yearning for more more more. I say this not to scare you. After all, every good hobby, from
photography, to woodworking, to exercise, to musical instruments, they
all have their toys and consumables, and those cost money, and that's fine. It's important for us to invest
in things that bring us joy. I say it just to give you a heads
up, so that you don't naively go into the hobby thinking, I just need two
printers and ten rolls, then I'll stop. I mean, maybe you have a less addictive
personality than I do, but I'd be willing to bet that no, you're not going to stop. Because something about this hobby,
whether it's the rapidly improving technology, the endless innovation
in materials, or just the urge to create new and more exciting things
means that too much is never enough. Speaking of creating new and
exciting things, let's talk for a minute about upgrading 3D printers. It's a long running joke that the first
15 or 50 things that you'll 3D print are, in fact, going to be upgrades
and modifications for your 3D printer. And while you might think that this
trend would be on the decline with the rise of more polished, closed-source
3D printers, you'd be wrong. People are still printing tons of upgrades
to tweak and improve their brand new or even closed ecosystem printers, or
even give new life to their older ones. That's great, and if that's
your thing, go for it. But one thing that I personally wish
I'd known about sooner is the fact that working on 3D printers and actually using
them are kinda two different hobbies. Sure, you can partake in both, as I do,
but I think that it's valuable to figure out earlier on which side of the hobby you
most gravitate to so you can get to it. There are some people who want
nothing to do with the mechanics of their 3D printer and they just want
to print stuff out all day long. There are others who spend most, if
not all of their time, tweaking their printers and designing custom upgrades
for them, and rarely if ever print things just for the sake of printing them. Now both of these things are totally
fine, no judgement either way. But, I think it's worth taking a moment
to ask yourself which one you are. And if you just want to print stuff
out, maybe don't get an ender machine. Whereas, if you love the idea of
building and tweaking and modifying your printer, maybe skip over the entire
Bambu Lab product line, or even over Creality, and go directly into the
world of Vorons, RatRigs, or VzBots. In the long run, it's gonna save you
time and money, and I hope it's gonna get you into the part of the hobby
that brings you joy the fastest. Which leads me to When you first
get into 3D printing, you're almost invariably going to be printing out a
lot of models created by other people. That's normal, and it's natural
as you get your bearings. But I've heard it said before
by many of the experts I respect, and I certainly agree. If you want to get the most out of
your 3D printer, you need to learn CAD, and to create your own custom
models to solve your own problems, and express your own ideas. And when you do learn CAD, I just
want to exercise a word of caution. Choose carefully. Depending on what you want to
design, there are right programs and wrong ones for that job. Yes, most programs can do
everything, but some tasks are easier than others in each program. When I first was starting out,
everyone raved about Blender as the swiss-army-knife of 3D design, but I spent months fiddling with
upgrades, non-manifold geometry, and endless headaches just trying
to get it to do what I wanted. Simply because, though Blender is great,
it's not the best tool out there for the type of design that I wanted to do. And vice versa, there are some types
of design that are best done in Blender or similar tools like it. I won't go into this into too much depth
because I actually did an entire video about it and why I personally switched
to Onshape for most of my modeling needs which you can check out here. I'll just summarize this point by
saying make sure that in your search for the perfect CAD program for you,
you take into consideration that the recommendations I or someone else make
are gonna be highly highly influenced by the type of modeling that they're
actually doing, and of course, their own preferences and workflow. So even if you're going to be doing
the same type of modeling as they are, remember that different programs
have different workflows for different types of people who think differently. Some people, for example, swear by
Plasticity for CAD modeling, whereas others prefer the workflow of Fusion360. Some people love designing things on
Shapr3D on their iPad, whereas others just find Onshape to be much more intuitive. My advice? First, figure out what type
of modeling you want to do. Is it sculpting, parametric
modeling, or mesh modeling? Then, find the top two or
three programs for that type of modeling, and ignore all the rest. From there, try them all out,
and refer back to point number one on investing in learning. Watch tutorials on YouTube,
or read the user manual. And most importantly, if something
isn't intuitive for you, ditch it. Don't be like me, spending months trying
to master a tool that just isn't suited for the way that you think and create. There's no shortage of great
tools out there, so find the one that is right for you. Another thing there's no
shortage of is filament types. When most users start out, they may
be a tad bit adventurous, leaving the comforts of PLA for PETG or
TPU, maybe even some ABS or ASA. But in my experience, the majority of
people stop their exploration there. This is probably because there is a
cloud of difficulty and fear around the more exotic filaments, like
nylon, polycarbonate, TPE, and more. This fear is somewhat justified,
and as I've covered in my three different filaments and how to use them
videos, you do need to meet certain criteria to even try printing them. You can't, for example, print nylons
or polycarbonates without an enclosed printer and a heated bed and hot-end
that reach high enough temperatures. But these days, more and more
printers are coming with all those things, and more and more users
are building their own enclosures, upgrading their hot-ends, and so on. Ultimately, each one of these different
types of exotic materials offers a unique blend of characteristics, whether it be
strength or ductility or heat resistance, energy return and so on. They give you a much wider range of
applications and projects far beyond what simple PLA, PETG, and TPU can offer. So personally, I wish that I'd
taken the plunge and started playing around with them much sooner, and
I'd encourage you to do the same. If you need some guidance, then you
should check out the videos that I've done on these different types
of exotic and advanced filaments, just to get you up to speed. Just make sure that if you're
going to get into these exotic and sometimes expensive filaments, you Okay, so when you first get into
3D printing, people talk a lot about filament storage and keeping
your filament dry, and all that. And like so many, I invested a ton
of money into vacuum bags, reusable desiccant, electric pumps, and the works. And all of that is great, but
here's the thing, depending on your climate, that might not be enough. First, I'll preface all this by
saying that I live in Israel, where 75 percent humidity is a
pretty much year round reality. So if you live in the deserts of Arizona,
feel free to skip to the next chapter. But one thing I will say is that I wasted
a lot of time trying to properly store my filament, fighting off the inevitable. I needed a filament dryer, or at
least some way of drying my filament. This is because not only does your
filament absorb moisture while it's printing, there is also a small amount of
moisture absorbed while it's stored, even if it's in a vacuum bag with desiccant. Now, you might be able to get away with
not actually drying your filament if, say, you only print PLA, and if you use the
roll up in a reasonable amount of time, but as soon as you start accumulating a
lot of open rolls, or you venture into the more hygroscopic filaments like
PETG, TPU, Nylon, and Polycarbonate, you're gonna need to dry those filaments. There are a lot of ways you can do this,
ranging from putting the roll on your printer's hotbed with a box over it. using the built-in filament dryer
functionality of your Bambu Lab printer, or a dedicated toaster
oven or food dehydrator that is no longer in use for food. But honestly, it's just so much easier and
safer to use a proper filament dryer like this one from Sunlu for a few reasons. First, you have pre-configured
settings for each type of filament, so you don't need to try to memorize
which filament should be dried at what temperature for how long. Second, you don't run the risk of
melting your expensive filament. Third, they allow you to print
directly from the dryer even while it's working, which if you're
impatient like me, is really useful. Finally, and this is a feature that
I'm pretty sure is unique to Sunlu's new S4 dryer, there's a special mode
where you can set the filament to dry for a certain number of hours and then
once it's done, it'll switch to dry box mode, which will only turn on when the
humidity reaches a certain threshold, meaning that you can store up to four
rolls of filament in there forever with very, very minimal power consumption. I've basically resorted to keeping my
most hygroscopic and most expensive filaments exclusively in here for
the last three or four months, and from my experience, it keeps them dry
much, much better than any dry box or vacuum bag I've used in the past. Now, some people swear by drying their
filament after use, but personally, I like to print freshly dried filament
for the best possible results, and fortunately, I can
do that with the S4. By the way, just for the sake of
disclosure, this video is sponsored by Sunlu, but I actually wrote that
entire thing and was going to say it exactly like that about the importance
of drying filament either way. Because I do wish I'd invested in a good
filament dryer much sooner, and the S4 is easily one of the best, if not the
best filament dryer I've ever used. So thanks to Sunlu, and if you're
interested in the S4, it should be on sale now to the general public. You can check out a
link in the description. Okay, so we talked a bit about moist
filament, and while I don't want this video to morph into a wire printer
failing video, though comment below if that's a video you would like to
see, I do want to talk about another hard one lesson in 3D printing. It's one that I have mentioned
before in my essential tools for 3D printing video, but one that is so
important that it bears repeating. Early on in my journey, I would
clean my print surfaces with isopropyl alcohol, 70%, or once I
started ordering it online, 99%. And that was okay for most
surfaces, most of the time. But then I got more different print
surfaces, textured PEI ones for example. I experimented with more material, such
as PETG, which do a whole lot better with a releasing agent like glue stick. And suddenly, bed adhesion
became a real issue. Look, there are different schools of
thought out there on the best way to get prints to stick to your print bed. There are people who believe firmly
in slathering on glue stick every few prints and topping it up when needed. There are people who believe that as long
as you don't touch the print surface with your oily fingers, applying isopropyl
alcohol as needed will get the job done. Then, there are the people
who actually have it right. The ones who know that nothing can
replace a high quality dish soap. Allow me to explain why
they're right though. First of all, a lot of R&D and thought has
gone into today's modern print surfaces. People have spent years figuring out
how to create a print surface that was incredibly sticky when hot but
released automatically when cooled. Thousands of hours of testing have gone
in at Prusa to test the different textured beds to ensure that they strike the right
balance between texture and adhesion. My point is, these surfaces,
if properly maintained, should adhere pretty damn well. Unless, of course, you're using
a specialty material or one that sticks too well, and therefore
you need to use glue stick to actually protect the print surface. It stands to reason, then, that if
you properly clean these surfaces, they should have no problems. But the properly part is
where people go wrong. Like I said, I've talked about it
before so I won't belabor the point here, I will just say that no amount of
isopropyl alcohol, or for that matter, no amount of dollar store dish soap
can replace a brand name dish soap with a high quality degreasing agent. I've experienced this first hand, people. I've paid the price in dozens of failed
3D prints before realizing the cause. There is a reason that brand
name dish soaps like Dawn or Palmolive are household names. Don't be stubborn, don't think
you're smarter than the chemists at Procter & Gamble, just pick up a
good, high quality bottle of whatever the leading brand of dish soap is
in your country and thank me later. Which leads me to, if you were an outsider
looking in at the 3D printing scene, you could be forgiven for thinking that
this is a hobby for loners who get along better with machines than they do people. It's origins lie in a very technical,
engineering-heavy discipline, and unlike, say, hot rods, most 3D printers
are not super portable, not enough for enthusiasts to lug them out to
parking lots and swap meets or cars and coffee every single weekend. And yet, one of the things that
you'll quickly discover about 3D printing is just how vibrant
of a social scene it really is. There are thriving communities
for 3D designers, tabletop gamers, Bambu enthusiasts, Prusa fans. There are Discord servers for individual
projects, printers, firmwares. There are even Discord servers where
you can hang out with fellow viewers of your favorite YouTube channel. There are even festivals around
the world where we geeks muster up the courage to venture out
into the real world and attempt to make eye contact with one another. And while some of these spaces can
be increasingly toxic with tribal mentalities around specific brands
and a few particularly bitter, angry, pathetic losers who just want to
make us all as miserable as they are, the vast majority of people in this
community, whether you meet them in person or online, are wonderful
human beings who just want to share their love and enthusiasm for this
hobby and the incredible things that it allows them to create. Personally, a lot of the most
incredible benefits that I've enjoyed from this hobby come not from my
own printer or even my own designs, but rather from the community. Whether this means collaborating with
other people to conceive, share, and remix designs, to reaching out to people
with more knowledge than me to solve a particularly annoying problem on one of
my printers, or just hanging out with cool people and learning from them. I am really glad that I've taken
the time to invest in relationships and getting to know the other
people like me in this community. And I only wish that I hadn't
waited until I had a YouTube channel behind me to start doing it. So I'd encourage you to
start doing the same. Of course, there are a lot of different
places that people socialize in this hobby and a lot of places you'll need
to check out before you find your tribe. And actually, it might be a really cool
video idea to share some of my favorite Discord servers, subreddits, Facebook
groups, and mailing lists for all you to check out, so comment below if that's
a video that you'd actually watch. But to get you started, do make sure to
check out the link in the description to our Discord server, and while you're
down there, maybe give a guy a like. So those are my 8 top things that I wish
I'd known, but I actually have one more. And it's probably not for everyone, but
from experience, I know that a certain percentage of you, like me, will love
3D printing so much that you're going to want to turn it into a side hustle,
or even a full fledged business. Now whether that means designing
your own models full time on Patreon. running a print farm, or selling your
prints on places like Etsy or Shopify. You could even become one of those
annoying 3D printer YouTubers. And hey, if you do, that's great. What could be better than doing
what you love all day and actually earning a living to do it? Personally, I am super grateful to all
of you for empowering me and allowing me to pivot from what I was doing before to
this, which I honestly enjoy so much more. But here's the thing. When 3D printing becomes your
job, it can be really easy to lose sight of what you love about. When you're bogged down with invoices,
deadlines, meetings, drama with your customers, and machine repairs. You might feel like you took a
perfectly good hobby and then stripped all the joy out of it. When that happens I've learned that
I just need to put everything down, walk away from the business side of
things, and just 3d print some stuff that has nothing to do with work. Whether that's downloading some
of the latest cool models on printables or hopping into Onshape
and working on a project that I've been wanting to do for myself. This simple step always prevents me from
burning out on the hobby entirely and it reminds me why I wanted to turn it
into a full time job in the first place. But this is one that I do need
to constantly remind myself. As we speak, I actually haven't printed
much of anything for like, days. So. I think I'm gonna go do that. So there you have it, nine of the
biggest things I wish I'd known when I first started 3D printing. If you're new to the channel, make
sure to hit that subscribe button because we have great content
coming out every single week. A huge thanks to Sunlu
for sponsoring this video. I just have to really quickly thank my
Patreon supporters and my YouTube members, including my Nylon and Peek members. Chip Cox, 2 Krazy Ketos, Amir
Chen, kris miller, and Don Arledge. And thanks to all of you for
watching and subscribing. It's actually kind of heartbreaking,
but around 85 percent of you who watch these videos aren't subscribed, so if
you enjoyed this one, please hit that subscribe button for me, would you? That's all for this week, but I'll
see all of you on The Next Layer.
